Re: virus: Virion tarot

Vicki Rosenzweig (rosenzweig@hq.acm.org)
Wed, 02 Oct 96 10:36:00 PDT


I want to tinker with (at the least) a few of David's proposed trumps.
Specifically, I don't think either sexual competition or coyness is
limited to one sex, and I don't think anything is gained by restricting
our memes in that way. I'm not at all sure we need a "sexual
competition" card, but if we have one, it should be applicable
to everyone, not just a minority of the human race. Similarly,
coyness isn't limited to one sex, or to sexual situations: consider
an athlete or executive being deliberately vague about their
availability, in order to get a better contract, even though they
really want that job and would, if necessary, take it at the current
price.

Also, I think there's a distinction between altruism and sacrifice.
In particular, we might want to distinguish between the sort of
altruism that is based on kin-selection (dying to protect one's
children, siblings, or other kin) and the various abstractions from it
(if that's what they are) that lead people to donate to charities that
spend the money on other continents, or sent Americans to Spain
in the 1930s to fight in the Spanish Civil War.

Still mulling this over,

Vicki
rosenzweig@acm.org
----------
<snip>
If we like this method (or
an evolved version
of it), should we use the Tarot cards? Well, can we out do them? Here's an
attempt:

Trump Cards:
Sacrifice (Altruism)
Self-Deception
Male Sexual Competition
Female Coyness
Social Hierarchy
Chaos (Randomness)
Symbiosis
Tit-For-Tat
Mystery (Uncertainty)
Birth
Death

Suit Cards:
Thought:
1 Ignorance
2 Information
3 Confussion
4 Analysis
5 Discovery
6 Truth
7 Invention
8 Power
9 Standardization (Replication)
10 Obsolesense

Emotion:
1 Greed
2 Lust
3 Pleasure
4 Pain
5 Loneliness
6 Hate
7 Fear
8 Faith
9 Joy
10 Love

That's enough for now. If feedback is positive, I'll do more, or perhaps
other have ideas in
this area.

Now, on to my replies to a few postings in this area...

:All you have is
:inputs, outputs and the black box. Turns out that if you send random
:information to the inputs and do spectral analysis on the outputs, you can
:do a pretty good job of describing ("divining" :-) the contents of the
black
:box.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

:Hey, all --
:
: As long as we're throwing around the idea, why not set up some tests?
:E-mail readings would seem the perfect means for eliminating verbal or
:non-verbal feedback (which most "psychics" use as a guide for their
:interpretations...).

If all we're doing is randomly generating memes, what kind of tests would we
do?

David Leeper
Homo Deus